From a Cause to a Style:Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American CityNathan Glazer

"Nathan Glazer, the eminent American sociologist, discusses the conflict between Prince Charles and [modernist] architects in his remarkable new book, From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City."--Robert Fulford, National Post

"Nathan Glazer isn't afraid of a little controversy. In From a Cause to a Style he deftly argues that the modernist architectural movement was a civic disaster. Modernism began as a call for functional buildings and essential public spaces shorn of unnecessary ornament, but wound up as 'soulless, bureaucratic and inhuman.' Glazer challenges the next generation of architects, planners and designers to learn from history's mistakes."--TBJ Home (Chinese English-language magazine)

"Glazer...has many useful and intelligent thoughts to offer.... [H]ere is literacy of a high order, writing which by force of style alone nearly convinces."--David Dunster, Architectural Review

"Written in an appealing and clear style, this book is a most necessary reading for anyone interested in both a deep and broad understanding of modernism, and the controversial forms it takes in the city."--Julia Nevárez, Architectural Science Review

"What is good? What is true? What is beautiful? From a Cause to a Style clears at least some of the intellectual space needed for a larger reconsideration of these questions. It deserves a wide reading."--Phillip Bess, Society

ADDITIONAL ENDORSEMENTS:

"I have learned profoundly from Nathan Glazer's cultural perspectives and deep insights, engaging the extraordinary and the ordinary. From a Cause to a Style is a work I consider most relevant and significant for our time via its all-encompassing range and its richness of detail involving multiple urban, architectural, technical, and social issues-recent, current, and future."--Robert Venturi, architect and author

"This collection is a reminder that in addition to being an urban sociologist, an astute commentator on social issues, and a public intellectual, Nathan Glazer is an insightful and provocative architecture critic."--Witold Rybczynski, author of Home: A Short History of an Idea

"Nathan Glazer stands in the grand but fragile American tradition of the humanist architectural critic. He is also one of our great complexifiers. Whether he is writing about cities, streets, public spaces, or particular buildings, he notices things that seem to escape the attention of the professional--though not always of the general public. To read him is to become aware of one's own architectural experience, and to begin thinking hard about how it might be improved."--Mark Lilla, University of Chicago

"This is a remarkable collection of essays that only Nathan Glazer could write. It sums up and partly explains the inability of contemporary architecture to deal with the problems of modern urbanism and to address many practical issues of building. As Glazer points out, an architectural tradition that identified itself by its capacity to focus the issues of functionalism has ended up by almost totally ignoring them."--Robert Gutman, Lecturer in Architecture, Princeton University